Editing The Sound Pattern of English (section)

{{Short description|Book by Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle}}
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{{More citations needed|date=September 2015}}
[[File:TheSoundPatternOfEnglish.jpg|thumb|First edition (publ. [[Harper & Row]])]]
'''''The Sound Pattern of English''''' (frequently referred to as '''''SPE''''') is a 1968 work on [[phonology]] by [[Noam Chomsky]] and [[Morris Halle]]. In spite of its title, it presents not only a view of the [[phonology of English]], but also discussions of a large variety of phonological phenomena of many other languages. The index lists about 100 such languages. It has been very influential in both the field of phonology and the analysis of the English language. Chomsky and Halle present a view of phonology as a linguistic subsystem, separate from other components of the [[grammar]], that transforms an underlying [[phonemic]] sequence according to rules and produces as its output the [[phonetic]] form that is uttered by a speaker. The theory fits with the rest of Chomsky's early theories of language in the sense that it is [[Transformational grammar|transformational]]; as such it serves as a landmark in Chomsky's theories by adding a clearly articulated theory of phonology to [[Syntactic Structures|his previous work]] which focused on [[syntax]].